A number of times I have asked questions that what I really need is either a link to the relevant section of the docs (because I can't find it) or a few terms to Google (because I can't seem to figure out what people call something). What should people do to avoid getting RTFM like answers?

I'm thinking that this is a common enough problem to have a short hand way to say exactly that.
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BCSJun 28 '09 at 16:30

Really? I can't say that I remember many questions explicitly saying that. If you find people are ignoring that aspect of the question, try putting it in bold :)
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Jon SkeetJun 28 '09 at 16:39

Unless I'm the exception, I think your comment supports my point. about 1 in 5 to 10 questions I ask fall into this class. And as for a lot of them, they would be doubled in length if I tried to explain this point in the question text.
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BCSJun 28 '09 at 20:17

I suggest you are the exception here... not that I've seen "RTFM" in many answers, either. If explaining what you've tried doubles the length of the post, so be it. More informative questions are never a bad thing.
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Jon SkeetJun 28 '09 at 20:47

Part of the issue is that I don't want someone to go out and solve my problem for me (that's my job after all) but rather just give me a pointer in the correct direction. The other part is that having a compact way to express this makes it much easier to for people to "get" what I'm looking for.
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BCSJun 28 '09 at 20:15

It doesn't matter how 'compact' you express it. You can write a sentence, you can use a tag, people can miss it when reading your post. Just re-mention it and ask politely for help getting a hint.
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Ladybug KillerJun 28 '09 at 20:35